Monday, March 19, 2018

XANTHIPPE AND HER FRIENDS – Beate Sigriddaughter

As a man raised in a "get
me a Grant's" culture ordinarily I would shy from a book titled
after a woman portrayed in history as having poured the contents of a
chamber pot over the head of her husband. That the husband was
Socrates, the father of Western philosophy, and wondering what he
might have done to deserve it, helped me overcome this inherent
reluctance. But what made the difference was that Beate
Sigriddaughter wrote the poems in Xanthippe and Her Friends.
Were I ever so unfortunate to have someone empty a chamber pot on my
head, for whatever reason, I cannot imagine a person more appropriate
to administer the retribution than a gentle, sensitive,
good-humored, sublime soul who writes like an angel. I don’t know
from personal experience if Beate Sigriddaughter meets those
qualifications, but from her writing I’ve no doubt she’d measure
up. I’ve been reading her for years, and each of those qualities
shines with a celestial magic through her carefully chosen words,
such as these:

“Sun glints on muscle and
desire to go deeper into words and destiny like Michelangelo cutting
at marble to meet his angels in the stone.”

My problem now is to discuss
this profoundly enlightening and enjoyable volume of writing while
remaining vigilant to unconscious traces of an upbringing that
encouraged me to feel superior to women, not merely because I have a
penis and they don’t but for their being generally regarded as “the
weaker sex.” Had someone turned me on to Kipling when I was much
younger I might have shaken some of those silly notions off before
they became ingrained. I have grown wiser with time, yet the damned
reflexes still twitch on occasion despite my unmitigated and humbling
certainty of which is indeed the deadlier gender. If I’m cautious
here it’s not from fear of a metaphorical chamber pot but of
contributing even an iota of additional pain to the feminine
sensibilities of any who may read my words.

Another concern with reporting
on Xanthippe
and Her Friends is that its contents are poems,
about which my learning is mostly auto-didactic and recent. I know
precious little about the traditions of formal structure or its
practitioners, or the language and criteria of formal criticism. I
enjoy a poem mainly for the beauty of its associations, the ideas and
feelings and visual impressions it conjures. An effective poem for me
works like an exotic drug, relaxing certain tensions of thought and
stimulating my imagination to unfold in the safety of a wondrous
playground of sensual ideas. Often the effect is contained within a
fragment, like this:

“with you I dreamed of
wandering side by side, confirming our exquisite place in this
maelstrom of molecules in the whirling of stars.”

Without question
Sigriddaughter is a feminist, but the common injuries and inequities
she addresses are delivered in a contemplative voice, the sharpness
of its pain and rage clothed in a sense of nuanced irony. In The
Wedding: Snow White, these selected lines bring into focus
the inhumanity of a culture that encourages lethal competition and
its consequences:

at my wedding celebration
my unsuccessful stepmom is condemned to dance to her death on heated
iron slippers. They are bringing them in now with smoking tongs.

How am I to enjoy my
wedding night with this orgy of vengeance still fresh on my mind?

Here are my choices. Gloat
and rejoice, dilute myself with drink or Disney bliss, or stand up to
my true self at last,

This wedding is canceled
until we find a better way. Any woman’s dishonor diminishes me.

The
poet bravely addresses a
personal frailtybeyond
her struggle to free herself
from the conditioning of male-dominant tradition. A
simple need of one woman.
“Deep within me,” she tells us, “is an ancient fear that loving
myself simply won’t count. And God, invoked for all-purpose
love, turns out to be too distant for comfort. Would
you please dance with me, if only just a little?”

Beate Sigriddaughter

Xanthippe
was “not exactly the beloved wife of...Socrates,” Sigriddaughter
tells us in the collection’s dedication. “For a long time her
name was used as a synonym for shrew. I want to honor her memory,
together with the memory of all women, sung or unsung, who bravely
made and continue to make their way through this complicated
existence of questionable attitudes with grace and rage and sadness
and joy.”

Yesterday I tickled grass.
I wanted to hear laughter, but it was just crickets rubbing legs in
the wind.